Friday, February 24, 2012

Why I'm not going down The River

I'm so disappointed in this show. It has a great premise, some very cool actors, and a few characters I like a lot, but it doesn't know what to do with any of those things.

The premise is that a Steve Irwin-esque explorer/TV star named Emmet Cole (Bruce Greenwood) has gone missing after one, last mission up the Amazon River. Though his wife and son were always a part of his long-running show, this was a mission that – for mysterious reasons – he didn’t want them to go on. So now Tess (Leslie Hope) and Lincoln (Joe Anderson) are heading back into the jungle with what’s left of Cole’s old production crew to look for him and document the experience. Lincoln’s already written his dad off for dead and isn’t keen on dredging up old memories, but Tess has new evidence that Cole may be alive, and guilt-fueled reasons for needing to find him.

Bruce Greenwood (National Treasure: Book of Secrets, the Star Trek remake) is always a welcome actor and he’s especially charismatic as Cole (I’d totally watch a nature show starring Dr. Cole; no problem), but there are other familiar faces too. Leslie Hope is one from her time as Jack Bauer’s wife on 24, but her character is as abrasive in The River as Teri Bauer was, so that’s not exactly a selling point. It’s really cool though to see Paul Blackthorne from the sadly short-lived Dresden Files as TV producer Clark Quietly. Even though he’s introduced as a cliché Hollywood jerk, my fondness for Harry Dresden made me immediately sympathetic to him and that didn’t go unrewarded. Quietly turns out to be a deeper character than his stereotype implies.

There are other great characters on the show as well, even though I’m not familiar with the actors who play them. Shaun Parkes (he’s been in a couple of episodes of Doctor Who, but I didn’t remember him) is likable as AJ the cameraman. Like Blackthorne’s character, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that AJ’s more than just a pushy guy who’ll do anything to get a shot. For one thing, he won’t do anything. He’s generally brave and resourceful, but he has limits that quickly get tested in the jungle.

Lena

I’m also fond of Lena Landry (played by Eloise Mumford), the daughter of Emmet Cole’s long-time cameraman. Her dad was part of Cole’s missing party and that contributes to Lena’s being one of the best balanced characters on the show. Where most of the characters are either gung ho to continue their quest or begrudging participants, Lena has a deep investment in succeeding, but is also very sensitive to the danger of their situation.

The rest of the crew isn’t as awesome. Thomas Kretschmann (King Kong, Wanted) plays a security expert named Kurt who’s in communication with someone outside the group and appears to have his own, deadly motives for wanting to find Cole. He’s so mysterious though that he’s all plot and no character. Four episodes in (if you count the two-hour premiere as the two episodes it was designed to be) and we know almost nothing about him other than that he may or may not be a threat to Cole when they find him.

Daniel Zacapa plays Emilio Valenzuela, the ship’s mechanic, who’s mostly there to fix things and be over-protective of his daughter, Jahel (Paulina Gaitan). Jahel is the most disappointing character because she starts off seeming so wise to the area’s dangers, but soon becomes annoying as the group’s Cassandra; relentlessly predicting their doom. If she had something else to do – or even just got to have fun every once in a while – her dire prophecies would be powerful. Unfortunately, she’s tiresome by the fourth episode. I suspect that given enough time, Jahel will be developed into a real character, but I’m not willing to wait that long. Especially with all the other problems this show has.

I’ve never really liked the found-footage style of storytelling anyway and The River is especially bad at it. That’s kind of surprising since it’s created by the guys behind the Paranormal Activity series, but there’s a blatant Blair Witch rip-off in the first episode and a couple of Paranormal Activity call-backs in the second. There are also a lotof instances of cameras being in places where they have no business being. Or turned on and filming footage when their operators have much more important things to worry about than keeping the camera rolling.

The hugest issue I have with the show though is the writing. The River’s week-to-week format has the team following the same formula every episode. They search for Cole, run into something dangerous (usually a ghost or spirit of some kind), then give up and escape back to the boat. There’s no continuity. What the team learns one episode has no bearing on what they do in the following episode. In the first one they find a huge cache of Cole’s tapes from before he went missing, so each week they pull one out and search it for clues. And they always give up before they even exhaust whatever clue they find.

The most frustrating example of the show’s miserable writing is in the first episode where they encounter the malevolent ghost of a member of the missing party. As they fight it, Tess screams at the ghost, trying to communicate with it and learn if Cole is dead or alive. As everyone chaotically battles the ghost, she yells at it to give her a sign: “one” for dead; “two” for alive. When the monster attacks her and leaves two scars on her abdomen, she takes it as her answer. That’s silly enough, but Tess is looking for hope, so she can be excused. The stupid part is that Lincoln – who up to this point has steadfastly proclaimed his belief that his dad is dead – accepts the “sign” too and completely changes his mind, even having to re-convince Tess during a moment of doubt.

It’s a pity, because I was totally up for a show about a group of cool, interesting people exploring uncharted areas of the Amazon. And I found a lot to like here; enough that I want to give it a chance and will miss some of these characters when I check out. I can get over the sloppy found-footage; the directors barely care about it enough to keep up the pretense, so why should I try to make myself believe it? With so many writing problems this early on though, I’m just not confident that I’ll be rewarded by sticking with it. Unlike the crew in The River, I’m giving up on Cole and finding something else to do instead.

5 comments:

My biggest problem is the ''neatness'' of the scripts. It's like if a character says ''I really hate snakes'' you know that the episode will feature snakes and - by the end - they'll have to overcome that fear to save everybody. It's as if each writer is given a specific template they have to follow. And hopefully Exposition Girl will get to do more than just mutter in Spanish and look worried soon.

As for the actual filming - I agree that some of the cameras seem to be very oddly positioned. I also dislike the over-use of ''interference'' every time something unusual is happening - or worse - about to happen, as it ruins any kind of tension...

I have to admit it's picked-up somewhat since the Pilot but if this wasn't to be renewed I don't think I'd miss it

Great points about the scriptwriting and the visual forecasting that something weird's going on. They apparently don't trust us to pick up on this stuff on our own.

I have friends who like the show and I can see how it could continue to improve, but my TiVo is full of stuff that I really WANT to watch; there's no reason to stick with this hoping it gets better. Besides, if it does get better and succeeds, we can always go back and catch up on streaming or DVD.

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About Me

Michael May writes Kill All Monsters, a comic that he and artist Jason Copland created. He also co-hosts a few podcasts including Dragonfly Ripple (about nerd parenting), Mystery Movie Night (a movie review podcast that's also a game), Hellbent for Letterbox (about Westerns in cinema, TV, books, and comics), and Starmageddon (Star Trek and Star Wars).